I've been seeing a lot of trends in and out of Nairaland about this Twitter account called "Tracy Zille" who apparently is an European woman that has been abusing Africa in different tweets. I decided to make a research on the account and this is what I found out

The account was created in June 2020 and has been tweeting hurtful and racist tweets about Africa. The first media outrage started in South Africa and this was what happened

Jean Le Roux, a research associate with the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), claims that it’s a fake account and there’s one person behind the image of a white woman named Tracy Zille, benefiting financially from the outrage of hurtful and distressing tweets.


WHO IS THE REAL TRACY ZILLE?
According to intensive research done by Le Roux and the team, it’s suggested that an Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) official is behind the contentious account.

Posting the research to Twitter, Le Roux captioned it saying:

“Earlier this week, #TracyZille was propelled to the top of SA’s trending lists by her controversially racist tweets. My investigation for @DFRLab tracked down the man making money from the account: a government official and EFF councillor from Makhado.”

According to Le Roux, the despicable tweets were designed to spark outrage, which it no doubt did. The main aim of this account was to get popular and post websites to its tweets. If you were to open these websites, you will be bombarded with ads, so basically he was just getting ad revenue and trying to get rich.

So who is this EFF official? Well, according to Le Roux, all signs, arrows and magnets point to Anthony Matumba, who is allegedly employed by the Makhado Local Municipality in Limpopo.

“Matumba has registered multiple websites in his name, which he monetised using Google’s AdSense,” said Le Roux.

“In order to drive traffic to these sites and increase the ad revenue they generated, several Twitter accounts spammed links to the websites, mostly in reply to prominent Twitter personalities. One of these accounts, @TracyZille, quickly rose to dubious prominence due to the racist tweets it put out in late June 2020,” he added.

TWEETS FROM THE CONTROVERSIAL ACCOUNT
The tweets that arose from the Tracy Zille account are defamatory and racially insensitive, to say the least.

Here are some of the things, the account tweeted around last year:

“Funny how Blacks complain about how banks give them loans for cars but don’t want to give them business and house loans. Listen here, they are not your banks. Build your own banks & stop complaining. U are the only race in the world without a major bank.”

“Jesus Christ was a Whiteman. He didn’t have even a single Black disciple from the 12. He didn’t heal even a single Black person in the Bible. He died without setting a foot in Africa. If Jesus Christ died for Blacks why are they suffering in Africa and working for us Whites?”

A link to Le Roux’s detailed research for DFRLab can be found here: https://medium.com/dfrlab/government-official-monetized-racial-tensions-on-south-african-social-media-d99b9f2b3995

EFCC in South Africa